Thylacine Scribd

8/14/2019 Thylacine Scribd

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Two Tales from Down Under

Geoffrey Fox

2009 Geoffrey FoxScribd


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Tidbinbilla 3

Hunting the Thylacine 16


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Tidbinbilla

Red lights ahead, rising in the blackness, hurtling through

deep space. Bright pairs of white lights whizzing hitherand passing, one pair after another, to the right. Further to

the right, a glowing line of yellow continues into the

nothing, accenting the essential blackness. Suddenly a

craggy column of rock winks in the light to the lefta

meteor sliding by. He, hands clutching a wheel as his

eyes rapidly scan the blackness and the flashes around

him, is disappearing, being swallowed deeper and deeper

into the great unclosed, drowning in space.

Fragmentary images pass through his center even as his

body thrills on the edge of oblivion. Moments that return,

experiences unassimilated, quickly glimpsed from odd

angles. Fearing, nearing panic, he struggles to contract

the lens of memory, to focus on the images of the most

recent past.

Only hours before, there were earth, daylight, gray

tarmac, the road to Tidbinbilla. To the Space Tracking

Station. This same wheel, sleeved in rubberized

simulated flesh, pulpy in his hands; this same cramped,

tensed posture as he clutched and now clutches the wheel.

There is glass between him and the dark, he knows this

by the reflections glancing before him. In that earlier

time, some hours ago, he saw flocks of sheep and solitary


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cows, intent on chewing and swallowing into their

several stomachs, on the grassy hills around the road to

Tidbinbilla. And emus. And the kangaroos.

He reaches back to an earlier image, to the start of the

road to Tidbinbilla, in Canberra, before the emus and the

kangaroos. He is inside a room with the gray-green leaves

of gum trees just beyond the glass of its outer wall, and

hears bird calls coming from those leaves. Someone he

doesnt know but who seems to know him pulls the sheet

away from his body, which he now discovers to be nude,and pulls the sheet up to her eyes and says, I dont think

you love me any more.

Along the road to Tidbinbilla in the morning light, huge

black emus moved stiffly, slowly on their stalk-like legs

with backward-bending knees. She, the person who was

next to him in that strange room, holding the sheet over

her face to her eyes, is next to him here, he is almost sure

of it. To his left, in the passenger seat. She seemed, she

seems irritatingly familiar. The emus were not going to

Tidbinbilla. Somehow he knows that. The emus were not

going anywhere. The emus were already there.This morning he offered no kiss, no word.

Everything is backward in Australia, Southernlandia, the

Antipodesthe direction of traffic, the seasons, the

emus knees. On the road right is to left, left is to right,

and September is the end of winter. What should be green

is grayish-blue, and in winter the bark falls from the trees

but the leaves do not.


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And time is also of another sphere, another dimension.

There are people he left in New York who were now

living in the time he passed through fourteen hours ago.

If he were to telephone them now, he would be entering

his yesterday, while, by talking to him, they would be

intervening in their tomorrow. Which means that space

something like 12,000 miles, he remembers, over thecurve of the earth from New York to Canberrabecome

time. They are alternative measures of distance, his from

them, and not long ago his from her, hers from him. That

was when she was here, and he was there, and their

nows were fourteen hours apart. Or 12,000 miles. Or, if

you count instead the time it took one of them, took him,

to join the other, the distance is not fourteen but more

than twenty hours across. When was that? Great chunks

of information are missing, must be inferred from

numbers like 12,000 and the still-echoing pain of

separation and the expensive silences on the telephone

and the long hours buckled into an airplane seat, images

and calculations that eddy swiftly in his mind as he, as

they, glide into blackness.

I dont think you love me any more.

He had heard these words before, in the same timbre, he

is sure, the same rhythm and intonation. Therefore, he

must know who she is. No, perhaps not, not necessarily.

It means only that he remembers seeing, hearing,

smelling, perhaps even touching this person. Which is not

the same as knowing. He is sure, though, that what she

said this morning, with the sheet pulled up to her eyes


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like a child playing peek-a-boo or an older child playing

harem girl, was not a simple statement. It was a question.

Or a challenge. And he remembers, his lips remember,

what he did those other times. His practiced answer is a

kiss, a word, a caress, no, not a word because a word

might reveal his confusion.

Hours ago, they started off to see the Space Tracking

Station at Tidbinbilla, which was to be a short drive from

Canberra. That strange room, then, was in a house in

Canberra. Quickly, now, he must force the connections,retrace the imagery to find out who he is, or who he was,

before they disappear forever into the timeless,

meaningless, endless blackness beyond the lights now

shooting past.

Huge saucer-like antennas, the largest 70 meters across,

turn slowly, in different directions, at different speeds, at

Tidbinbilla. They are tracking tracklessness, following

things unseen, as an aborigine pursues a wallaby by

communion with its soul. The voice on the film in the

museum at Tidbinbilla does not admit, though, that the

antennas are tracking spirits. Ancient spirits. He imaginesarchangels and seraphim with braided beards and lions

bodies, lovers slain by jealous gods and wandering

through space on their way to constellation, Enkidu

roaring and trying to return to Babylon. Or the giant

caterpillars of the Dreamtime that made the mountains

hereabouts and now must have returned to most distant

space.


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What the voice on the film at Tidbinbilla claims the

antennas do is capture radio signals. The antennas are

many great ears, all neurally connected to one brain, or as

the film-voice puts it, the signals received by all of them

are combined electronically into a single information

system. The ears function as a single but dispersed radio

telescope, as big as the sum of its parts. That, anyway, iswhat they say in the little museum.

There were no people visible to run the Tidbinbilla Space

Tracking Station. The museum, with its skimpy scalemodels and a constantly-running fluttery film describing

the operation and its aims, was open but unattended. A

woman and, perhaps, her daughter sold potato crisps and

souvenirs from a tiny kiosque by the entrance, and asmall truck parked at a little distance may have meant

that someone else was over by one of the antennas,

tightening a screw perhaps or tuning something.

Otherwise, the station seemed to run itself.

They have been living together for a very long time now,

he is sure of that, as unconstellated lovers. Since before

Enkidus journey, it seems. But not forever. He canremember an earlier time. He remembers laughing with

many women, grappling with them and caressing them,

priding himself on his potency. The roar of Enkidu.

Bright shiny memories of a younger self. The women in

his Dreamtime have no faces, no pattern to their bodies.

A flash of a smile, a taste of lipstick, an elastic nipple

bouncing back after he pushes it with his tongue, the ripe


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smell of juices of a womans sex lingering pleasurably in

his mustache, the big mustache of another time.

The memory of that smell summons up a whole

succession of smells and the rich, sour tastes of excited

sex, the touch of hair against his cheeks, the probing of

his tongue through folds of flesh. He thinks, perhaps I can

count them that way, the women, because he remembers

more vividly, more individually, the smells, tastes, feels

of cunts, even the colors of their hairs, than he remembers

gestures, phrases, faces.

He looks to his left, because here in the Antipodes ones

passenger sits on the left, and realizes that he is not

certain there is a person there. He infers the human

presence from signals captured from that quadrant of near

spacea play of shadow briefly outlined by the passing

of white light, which he combines instantaneously with

other memories stored to form a pattern of nose and lips,

the intermittently confirmed play of light on what must

be hair, a ledge he somehow knows are breasts, and in

some more mysterious way knows are breasts of a

particular warmth and firmness that would require ameasure of nearly precisely predictable oral, labial,

lingual attention to respond and shift their shape. What

else? Perhaps, he is not sure, he can detect a weight

drawing down the seat to his left, evidence of mass, and

the suggestion of aroma of person, of a particular person.

Despite the fragmentariness and faintness or

intermittence of all available sense data from that

quadrant, he feels certain that there is a woman beside


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him in the car, and not just a random woman whose

surfaces and smells and mass happen to have come

together in this place at this moment, but one particular

woman known to him, whose mass and smells and

surfaces have come together in other ways, sometimes

surrounding him, sometimes surrounded by him,

sometimes that nose and those lips pressed against hisneck.

Betsy, he says in a low voice, almost a murmur. It is a

test, a probe he has emitted at low power, appropriate tothe estimated distance of the targeted object. There is a

momentary change in the countours of the shadows as the

next light slips past, and he thinks perhaps she has

smiled, or frowned, or at least reacted.

The signals captured at Tidbinbilla come from capsules

hurled into distant orbit from earth, a metallic litter still

crying and beeping for home. But other signals come

from places no earth-litter has yet reachedor so the

movie asserts. He imagines the calls of a taxi dispatcher a

million years ago on a smallish planet in the Xanagoras

Nebula, just now reaching the slowly waggling ears ofTidbinbilla, or perhaps the sound of a body-scale dryer

used by a vain pentapod in a powder room in Colophonus

Minor. No one, on Earth anyway, knows how to read the

signals. The antennas seek them out, moving, tracking,

transmitting to computers.

Or perhaps somebody on Earth does know, but that

somebody is surely not in Tidbinbilla, nor probably evenin Australia. The space tracking station is run by NASA


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out of Washington, DC, explained a leaflet in the

museum.

The Australian government provides the site, far from the

electronic babble of Sydney or Melbourne and further yet

from Babylon itself, the radio traffic over the U.S.

Australia declares itself proud of its partnership in this

scientific endeavor. Which, he suspects, is not about

science at all. Rather, it is a futile effort to control. NASA

wants to be sure that no one contacts Earth without going

through immigration. It combines all the informationfrom the world-wide system on its computer in

Washington, self-declared command center for spaceship

earth. The rest of humanity are merely crewmembers, or

ballast.

He is accustomed but not resigned to the futility of his

own efforts to control. Things like radio telescopes and

automobiles. If he could understand them perhaps he

could control them, or at least prepare himself for the

consequences. The danger has been accelerating for him

since the first television set with its small gray window

which lit up and hummed when he turned a knob, backwhen television sets were new and wondrous. He stared

at the flickering gray and white image of an Indian chief

in war bonnet, and listened to the high-pitched steady

drone, telling him that the thing was alive and ready and

waiting for Ed Sullivan to be invented. Then he would

turn it off and watch the single greenish eye stare at him

until it faded and disappeared. Thats when he knew what


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he had even earlier suspected, that powers in space were

watching him, pleading for him to respond.

That was in his prepubescent Dreamtime.

Just over the hills was a valley of eucalypts and brush

wherein a garden of beasts crouched hidden from the ears

of Tidbinbilla. They had perhaps fallen from space, thesered kangaroos that a sign promised along one path, grays

along another. His foot sank into a thick wet pudding of

forest debris over a barely-moving rivulet, and he and she

helped each other pick their ways across and up the drier

slope.

He had lately been thinking he was very old. Nearly fifty,

old for a man, or for a kangaroo. As he hunted thekangaroos, he was certain, more certain than he had ever

been before, that he was going to die. To disappear into

space, or into nowhere. Not immediately, perhaps, but

soon enough, on the scale of the time it takes some radio

signals to travel to the antennas of Tidbinbilla, or of the

dozens of milennia since the aboriginals and kangaroos

first appeared on this continent. Whether he had days or

decades, it was now very clear to him that the things hehad imagined doing in the Dreamtime.

She had said, I dont think you love me any more.

Did he? Did it matter? To anyone but him and her, who

both were going to die? Would it matter by the time

someone out there picked up the beeping calls of earth-litter and sent a message back to Tidbinbilla, a milennium

or tens of milennia hence? What difference did the


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extinction of this emotion make, or the extinction of the

planet or even the inevitable extinction of the universe?

How could any of that compare in importance to his own

more imminent extinction? It occurred to him that he had

done nothing of any consequence in all those years that,

until lately, he hadnt noticed slipping by. And that even

if he had, it would soon be of no consequence. That onthe scale of the universe, there were no consequences.

Then he saw one! Lying on its side on a little knoll, its

big haunches and hind feet and its square face pointedtoward him, its long oval ears erect. There! he said to

her, and pointed. And then he saw there was another, and

another. They were not red as promised but grayish rust,

like the bush, and very still. He was pleased. It wasludicrous to be hunting, just with the eyes, with no

weapon or even a camera, an animal as ludicrous as a

kangaroo, but that was what he had come here to do, and

he was pleased that he had done it.

Sometime soon after dark, after they had left the wildlife

reserve and seen more kangaroos, in placid clusters

grazing on the hills that had been theirs before there wereradio antennas or wildlife reserves, and more emus, in

that time when he still felt he had some control of this

vehicle, this car, he had stopped with her to see a

blowhole. He had pulled off the coastal highway into a

small coastal town, and there on the very edge of the

shore, just out of reach of the lights of the towns few

streets, and only dimly lit by a yellowish bulb, they found

a path through the rugged black rock.


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The rock dropped abruptly, and they had to grope their

way in the penumbra until they found a wall. There was a

man there with his small son. They were friendly and

quite unconcerned about being approached by strangers

in the dark. Of course. This was Australia. The man and

boy were about to leave, having seen what theyd come

for. She was not as wild as hed been told to expect, theyoung father said. His speech was so Australian, so of the

place, that he felt embarrassed to reply and reveal his

own barbaric, urban yawp.

He looked down into the great black hole at her. A

swirl of white water, reflecting the faint starglow of the

misty night. The thumps of the Pacific crashing against

the rock walls beyond. Five or six more thumps, then asudden rise, a vertical spout of white-topped water,

coming as high as their eyebrows, then crashing down,

receding, syncopated as the thumps of its withdrawal

were overlapped by new thumps from the sea beyond, in

a process as old as Gondwanaland. It reminded him of the

foreverness that could not be his.

She came up to him and grabbed his arm. He let her. Hethought he even was grateful for the touch. But he looked

away.

Now they were moving again, swiftly, through the black.

Lights sliding swiftly by. Breathing sounds nearby to his

left. Flashes of red and white glancing off the glass.

Moving away, ever farther from Tidbinbilla.

He grasps the wheel tighter.


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He wants to hold himself together.

He wants to disintegrate.

He wants to go into orbit with all the metallic earth-litter

beeping and crying for home.


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Hunting the Thylacine

Hobart, 1990

In the cool, crisp air of Hobart, Tasmania, in September,a man stands at the end of a white dock and gazes past

the white hulls and sails reflected in the deep blue water

of Sullivan's Cove. His tweed jacket, buttoned against the

chill, is a bit informal for a businessman on a tea-break,

and his inspection of the defunct IXL Jam Factory on the

opposite quay too sustained for a local stroller. In front of

him are mounted photographs of the long masonry

buildings through all the years, from the 1890s to the1950s, when IXL was cooking, mashing and canning

Tasmanian apples, pears and apricots for the breakfast

tables of England. The black fumes pouring from the

factory chimney would have been sweet with burnt sugar

and fruit, and the smoke stack and masts of the waiting

ship would have been rocking gently at the dock, like the

small craft now bobbing brightly at their moorings.The bright morning light strikes everything at a sharp

angle, ricocheting off the boats, the white-painted docks,

the glossy water, the flame-orange jacket of a young

mother and the bright blue parka of her child as they

enter a dark green, light-sucking restaurant at the of the

dock. The stranger follows, and queues for fish and chips

and beer in a room noisy with shouted orders, crockery

and sputtering grease. At a chilly, but quiet, dockside


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table he looks at the label on the beer bottle, Cascade.

A pair of yellowish quadrupeds with striped backs are

pictured, generic and lifeless, in a vague landscape of

green hills, grayish lagoon, and darkening yellow sky

smogged up from the jam factory, no doubt.

In a map-and-prints shop back on Terra Firma, he asks

to see animals. Obligingly, almost servilely, the thin,nearsighted storekeeper limps to a rack of drawings of the

fauna of Tasmania: echidna and platypus; yellow-eyed

currawongs, gaudy cockatoos and chubby black mutton

birds; kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, and other

marsupials, and finally a tinted print with all the beasts of

the island, assembled as though for a conference or to

embark on Noah's ark, in inked outlines, pastel colorings

and placid poses.

Ah, there's the Tasmanian tiger, the visitor says in an

American accent, maybe midwestern. It's called a

thyracine,' right?

Thylacine, yes.

Un huh. Thylacine. Extinct now, isn't it?

Oh! Let's hope not!

I thought the last one died in the nineteen-thirties?Oh, yes, the last one in captivity. In the zoo.

Air escapes from his lungs, and he seems to deflate and

shrink as he says this. But suddenly he puffs up again and

almost shouts.

But there are still sightings, every now and then! And

by people who should know. Rangers, in the mountains.

The American nods quickly and backs away. When a

couple comes in, the American slips out.


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A block away, at the Tasmanian Museum, he locates

the single stuffed specimen described as Thylacinus

cynocephalus, pouched dog with a wolf's head,'

commonly called Tasmanian tiger' or Tasmanian

wolf.' a semi-nocturnal marsupial carnivore; its pouch

opens to the rear. It is unrelated to dogs, cats, or any

other animal except the much smaller Tasmanian devil.'The thing in the case is about wolf-size, but the

proportions are odd the hock, or dogleg, only inches

above the foot, so that most of the hindleg is a single

long, unbending bone, and the tail seems too straight and

long. The forelegs are almost stubby, and the shoulders

look less muscular than the haunches. It has short, stiff

hairs, yellowish brown with dark, nearly black stripes

across its back and the top of its tail. On the floor of the

case lie the skulls of another thylacine and a dog, for

comparison. The thylacine has more teeth, among other

differences.

In the nineteenth century, says the placard, sheep-

breeders used poison, traps and guns to exterminate them,

and the Van Diemen's Land Company, and later the

Tasmanian Parliament, paid bounties for their scalps. Thelast known thylacine was snared in the Florentine Valley

in 1933. It was sold to the Hobart Zoo, where it died on

the 7th of September, 1936, the same year the Tasmanian

tiger was declared to be a protected species.

He glances at the stuffed kangaroos, wallabies and

little potoroos and bettongs, the platypus and echidna,

and a furry sugar glider, with webbing between its fore

and hindfeet for sailing through the air, stuffed and


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suspended from wires as though in midflight, and gives

even less attention to a gaudy array of dead beetles from

around the world, before following the signs to the

exhibit about the Tasmanian Aborigines. Labels explain,

disapprovingly, that English colonists hunted down the

natives until, by the mid-nineteenth century, big, black

William Lanney, photographed in suit and tie, and littleTrucanini, in Victorian gown and jacket, were the last

known survivors, and when they died, the race was

thought to be extinct.

A few school children and a man and his son stumble

in and look dumbly at the crude bamboo spears and

spear-throwers and the stone knives. One boy looks

sideways at an illuminated turn-of-the century photo of

another black lady, a later-than-last survivor, and when

he presses a button, a scratchy recording of a woman's

voice sings Christian hymns mixed with seemingly

tuneless songs in a language that even she had forgotten.

But on another wall are photographs of lighter-skinned

people, described as contemporary Aborigines

descendants of white sealers and their black concubines

of over a hundred years ago, reclaiming a heritage that,presumably, they now have to make up.

The valley, Tasmania, 1934

Billy Rourke was so mad he was going to burst, he was

shivering with rage as he stomped into the bush,

clutching his father's kangaroo gun by the barrel. He

didn't have to stomp far gum trees, ferns and then the


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celerytop pines quickly hid him from sight of their box-

like little house with its filthy chickens scratching around

the coop. And he had to stop stomping, anyway he

knew the trail, but still he had to be careful where he

stepped, because the bush was full of snakes.

E's got no right. No right at all. It wa'n't my fault, and

'e knows it. Besides, 'e was pissed. Grog is what does 'atto 'im.

He trembled until he finally let it out, in a vehement,

hoarse whisper.

God damn 'm!

And he cried, little short sobs and tears burning in his

eyes. That was enough, it was plenty, because it was just

between him and God, and God could hear him even if he

just thought it and didn't say it at all.

Billy was 15 and nearly as big as his pa. That was what

made it so humiliating. He should have twisted out of his

grasp and run away. Or he should have pushed the old

man. But he couldn't and didn't really want to. He was his

pa, after all. And if he got a mind to take a switch off that

old apricot tree and light into him with it, even if there

weren't no reason, Billy was supposed to just stand thereand take it. And it hurt, it hurt all right, right through the

thin shirt and mended pants. The old man was still strong,

especially when he was mad. But what hurt wasn't so

much the stinging of the switch against his twisting back

and thighs, it was that here he was, Billy, 15 and nearly

grown, and this man, his pa, was doing this to him. And

for something that wasn't even his fault.

Something had got at the chooks, filthy old chooks


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scrabbling around their coop, tore a hole in the chicken

wire and made off with a hen. Billy was supposed to take

care of the chooks and the fence, but there wasn't nothing

wrong with the fence before, just somethin' come nobody

coulda been expecting. What made it worse was it was

that fat old black one that wasn't such a good layer

anymore but that his pa had been eyeing for a stew.Somebody else had got Pa's meal from 'im. Black

feathers all over around the hole in the fence, ripped open

at about two feet above the dirt.

Having to keep his mind on his footing distracted him

from his anger. As he got deeper into the damp, chilly

woods, he became aware of their dampness and chill

penetrating his wool jacket. It was dark in here, deep

shadows texturing the gray: gray brown mud, gray green

leaves against gray blue branches, accented by the black

of a lightning-charred limb tangled among the grays. The

wood was his refuge, its darkness an extension of his

mood, externalizing it, enveloping him in its shadow like

a like-minded companion. The wood was, in some way

he couldn't quite grasp or say, his parent. His mother,

perhaps. Walking in the woods was like letting hismother hold him, which he was too big to do now, even

though sometimes he wished he could. He kept walking

along the muddy trail, and he heard the forest sighing

with him as gradually his sharp anxious breaths slowed,

grew longer, deeper.

In the shadows now, his body quiet and alert, Billy

began thinking, listening to the wood and feeling the cold

damp through his jacket and the soft, cold, moist earth


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beneath his cracked, laced boots, becoming aware as if

for the first time of the hard smooth cold barrel of the

rifle in his hand. He looked at another black limb tangled

among the grays. A black currawong perched on it was

examining him with its yellow eyes, and Billy

remembered the hole in the chicken wire and the lovely

swirl of black feathers and fluffy gray down around therent fence. He'd grabbed the gun from behind the kitchen

door without thinking about it, just because he wanted to

go out deep into the woods and because he was so angry

he wanted to shoot something, a wallaby maybe, or a

bunch of currawongs or any bloody thing. But he didn't

feel like shooting the currawong that was perched just a

few feet away from him. He knew, even if he'd wanted to,

the bird would take flight as soon as he moved to lift his

gun.

Now he thought again. Maybe he could shoot whatever

it was got the chook. It wasn't a snake, which was what

usually got at them. And it probably wasn't a devil

they didn't go for tearing up fences, and it was sort of

high for one of them. Coulda been a dog, but he didn't

know of any dogs gone wild around here.He'd been reading an American book he'd got from his

cobber Harry, it had a bad smell of mildew 'cause Harry'd

had to hide it somewhere, maybe on the floor under his

bed, so's his mum didn't catch him reading. Same with

Billy, his pa didn't care much but his mum would whip

him if she caught him ruining his eyes on something

wasn't school work or the Bible. The book was about a

hunter named Mackenzie, in the mountains, the Rockies,


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tracking a mountain lion by following its footprints and

other little signs, like broken twigs where the cat had

passed and sometimes even a few little hairs from his

coat. Billy and Harry'd never done any tracking, you can't

track a mutton bird and the way they hunted kangaroos

was they just went out to where they knew they'd

probably find some and looked around and waited andthen, bang! But tracking a mountain lion, that would be

an adventure.

'Course, the mountains around here weren't so high as

the Rockies, and they didn't have the same kinds of trees.

Most of all, there weren't any mountain lions. But, he

thought, there could be tigers. Probably. Used to be, used

to be lots. Billy's Uncle Conrad, his mother's half-brother,

had a pelt, he called it a Van Diemen's wolf but looked

more like a tiger to Billy, with those stripes. Besides,

tiger sounded meaner and bigger.

Billy had never hunted anything that could fight back.

He thought about that tiger, the one he'd now decided

must have got that chook, and it got bigger and meaner

the more he thought about it.

In the woods, a tawny, striped figure pushed away

from the ground with a thrust of its forepaws and rocked

back to rest on its long hindlegs and tail. Thus tripodally

erect, its forelegs held loosely in front of its chest and its

thick, long neck stretching up and forward, it's sightline

was above the highest ferns and it's quivering nose high

above the confusing wealth of smells at ground level.

It was a female, and hungry. Until today, she had been


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carrying her three cubs and had barely been able to hunt.

Months before, tiny, hairless and almost weightless, they

had emerged from her womb and she had felt them

groping the short trail to the opening of her second

womb, the pouch. Once inside, each had attached itself to

a teat and suckled. For the first few days, their minute

weight, their tiny movements, the tugging at the teatsinside her pouch, the new smell of her own milk had been

almost the only sensations she was aware of. In the

following weeks, she stopped trying to rear up on her

hind legs, because of the cubs' increasing weight and

because she knew they might fall out. They had gotten so

big that they dragged her pouch to the ground as she

walked, and she could no longer lope through the bush

mile after mile, pursuing wallabies or potoroos.

Her mate would normally have done the hunting then,

bringing whole birds or a pademelon or the bloody

haunch of a kangaroo to the lair. Her mate also would

have mounted her again by now, now that this, her first

litter, was empouched. But months back, even before the

embryonic cubs had emerged from her uterus, he had

fallen into a snare, not far from the lair. She had heardthree hoarse, startled barks which, though she had seldom

heard it, she knew to be his voice. She had poked her

head from the lair, not daring to rear up, and faintly but

surely, she had smelled men. Her short, blunt ears,

standing straight up, caught the sounds of bodies clumsily

crashing through the bush and a man's curses and then

laughter.

The cubs had come normally and had continued to


26/46

grow, suckling on her teats, but for the past several weeks

their mother had had very little to eat. Little birds, a

lizard she had even gnawed on roots with her sharp

teeth, meant to tear meat. In desperation only the night

before last, she had crept to the edge of the woods, the

weight dragging under her belly making every step a

strain. Cautiously, cautiously, she stopped every few feetto sniff the air and catch any sounds, careful to move

against the slight, betraying air-current toward her goal.

Her nostrils caught the green, minty scent of eucalyptus,

the powerful and more significant odor of chicken shit

and newly scratched earth, and something else that made

her hesitate the not-too-distant smell of a dog's sweat.

Trembling, she had crept to the wire fence. A sudden

swipe of her short, powerful forepaw stretched an

opening in the wire, and her head darted in and her jaws

snapped through the back of a sleeping hen so swiftly it

barely had a chance to squawk. Then, much more quickly

than she had arrived, she loped back, the weight of the

pouch between her hind legs partly counterbalanced by

the warm, jerking chicken bleeding in her jaws as she

lurched into the relative safety of the bush.But that had been more than a day ago, and since then

she had had no meat. This morning at the edge of the lair

she had raised herself upright, straightening her hind legs

and standing tall, leaning back against her thick-based

tail, and, even though she knew it was too early for them,

let the weight of the cubs and the taut stretching of her

belly force them to scramble to keep their grip until

finally they tumbled out, one on top of the other. She


27/46

dropped down again to all fours, and with her nose

sought out one who had tumbled a little further and was

beginning to overcome his bewilderment and to test his

new environment with a forepaw, and nosed him back

with the others and pushed them all to the back of the

cave, their little furry bodies huddled tight against one

another. Then, confident that they would not venture out,she leapt the few feet from the rock ledge to the ground

and disappeared into the bush.

Now, in mid-morning, too hungry to wait for dusk, she

stood up on her hind legs and tail for the second time that

day and sniffed the air.

Billy'd thought of maybe going to get Harry to come

with him, Harry and the Rourkes' dog Rex. It wasn't that

he was afraid exactly, it was just that it was always good

to have your mate along. Because you never know.

Maybe there was more than one tiger. And even if it was

just one, a fellow wanted to have his back covered,

because tigers were sneaky creatures, his Uncle Con had

told him. But if he went back for Harry, he'd have to pass

by his own house, and that didn't feel right, now that hisoriginal impulse the rage that had started him off into

the woods had carried him so deep, so far from home.

And he didn't want to face his pa again until he could

show him, show him what had took the chook in the first

place and that it hadn't been Billy's fault and that now

he'd killed the tiger. Besides, that hunter Mackenzie in

the American book had done all his hunting by himself.

Made a point of it, just him and the mountain and the


28/46

mountain lion, it was the efficient way of the hunter.

Well, Billy would do the same.

Of course the sensible thing to do, if he were a real

tracker, would be to go back to the coop and see if he

could pick up a trail. Well, it was too late to do that, and

wouldn't do any good anyway, because him and his pa

had messed up the ground so much with their scufflingfeet when his pa had grabbed Billy and started hitting him

right there where the fence was torn.

Anyway, Billy wasn't really tracking, not the scientific

way anyway, by looking for clues on the ground. He was

instead listening to his own impulses, the same ones that

told him it was a tiger that got the chook. He was trying

to think the way Mackenzie did: If I was a tiger, where

'ud I go? He had just a feeling, a hunch, fed by his

hearing that a tiger had been caught in the area less than a

year ago, and by his memories of what his Uncle Con had

said about tigers when he was a boy. His hunch, what he

chose to believe, was that there were more of them out in

the area near where that last one'd been caught.

He hadn't seen it, but his pa had read about it in the

paper and there'd been talk on the radio and in schoolabout it. They'd sent it to the zoo down in Hobart. Billy'd

never been to Hobart and never seen a zoo, although his

big brother had gone there a year ago to work in the jam

factory if it'd been Billy, he'd have gone to sea. Billy's

teacher'd said the tigers'd become very rare, and there

was some people wanted the government to make it a

crime to kill them, but most people just thought they was

nuisances and they should kill them all off. But his Uncle


29/46

Con had a different attitude.

Uncle Con was kind of a queer fellow, Billy's pa was

right about that. He didn't like Con coming around the

house, so when Billy wanted to see him he had to go out

to Con's cabin in the woods. It wasn't much of a cabin

his pa had called it a humpy, and Billy's mum had got

mad and his pa had said he was sorry but that Con's housewas sorrier still. He said it in that way he had where he'd

say the meanest, cruelest things but with a smile, like you

was supposed to laugh at his joke, but Billy's mum hadn't

laughed and the whole house was in gloom for days after.

For Billy, Con was part of the woods, just as much as

the kangaroos and gum trees and the currawongs. His

dark brown eyes on those yellowish eyeballs would look

at you and through you and beyond you as he talked

about the old times, not just tigers but kangaroo hunting

and bushrangers and the sealers over on the little islands,

some things he'd seen and some he'd heard from his

mother. He had the same pa as Billy's mum, but Con's

mother was some lady Billy'd never seen and nobody

ever talked about, not even Con himself. Con just

laughed and changed the subject whenever Billy'd askedabout her. He didn't even know if that other, sort-of

grandmother, was still alive. Billy had learned that Con

had some other brothers and sisters, though, who weren't

brothers and sisters of Billy's mum. It made him awfully

curious.

Con had hunted the wolves, as he called them, for

the bounty when he was a kid. The government was

paying a pound per head, but there was a rich farmer


30/46

paying one-and-twelve, even after the government bounty

stopped back in oh-nine. They'd needed the money, Con'd

said which was another reminder of Con's

differentness, that he'd grown up in a poorer household

than Billy's mum.

Anyway, Con said he'd only collected the bounty once.

He knew how to track the wolves, and he'd followedone and come up on it from downwind and surprised it,

and he said it stood up on its hind legs and looked at him

with almost a human expression, fear and pleading, and

he'd pulled the trigger. Then in order to collect the

bounty, he had to cut off its head, and he said when he

did that, he knew he was never going to shoot a Van

Diemen's wolf again. He mentioned a brother Tolly, lots

older than he, or maybe it was a cousin, who'd caught one

in a snare, and the animal was so nervous and frightened

it gave off a series of high-pitched barks, like a small dog

only it didn't really sound like a dog, and then it went stiff

and its heart stopped. Con said he'd decided to leave the

wolves alone, that they belonged to the woods just as

much as he did. He'd kept the pelt of the one he'd shot,

must have been ten years before Billy was born, so itwould be about twenty-five years old now. It wasn't very

big, not even as big as the hide of their mongrel Rex. As

Billy reflected on this, and the stories he'd heard from

Con, a lot of his fear of the tiger evaporated, only to come

back when he remembered other things he'd heard, about

how vicious they were and that they killed sheep. He

wanted to still his fear, so that he could dare to go on in

his hunt, but at the same time he wanted to convince


31/46

himself that the animal was dangerous, so that the hunt

would be worthwhile. So as he walked deeper into the

area where he thought that last tiger had been caught, and

closer also to where Con kept his humpy, he kept

alternating frightening himself and calming himself,

trying to keep the two emotions in balance.

She had caught a scent and dropped quickly, silently to

all fours. She hadn't yet seen her prey, but she was certain

it was a wallaby. She slipped easily through the woods,

crouching under the lowest branches, slowed only by the

thick ferns, leafy at ground level, and the occasional

fallen branches where she had to squeeze underneath,

ducking her head and shoulders through and then

stretching her long hindlegs behind her as she pulled with

her forelegs. She was intensely aware of her hunger and

eager for the kill.

The wallaby, grazing in a clearing, sensed her and

suddenly jerked upright. She stood still, eyes fixed on the

wallaby which was now looking around, its weak eyes

trying to sense some movement. It was full grown,

probably at least as heavy as she was, and its kicks andpowerful tail lashings would be dangerous if it were

cornered. But she knew it would choose to run, or rather

hop, rather than fight as long as it had the choice. The

trick was simply to get and stay as close to it as possible,

until the moment to move in for the kill.

Now it seemed to see her, and wheeled around and

leaped into the woods. The predator lunged after, keeping

lower to the ground. And of course, unlike the wallaby,


32/46

her hindlegs moved independently. In its panic, the

wallaby crashed through the brush, while she loped in

pursuit, trying to stay below the branches and twigs. The

wallaby, seemingly unsure of which way to turn, would

suddenly change course and bound off in another

direction. The predator followed, far enough behind that

she could take shortcuts toward the wallaby's presentposition. Some instinct was taking the wallaby to higher

ground, to a steep ascent that he managed with great ease

with his long, powerful hindlegs, his thick, almost conical

tail waving up and down with each bound. The predator

followed that tail and the noise of branches breaking and

of the wallaby's weight landing, over and over.

Scrambling where the wallaby leaped, she was sometimes

only a few meters behind and never too far to locate her

prey. The chase was taking her far from her lair, but no

matter, she'd go as far as she had to. The panic of the

wallaby gave her an advantage, offsetting his superior

speed. With all his twists and turns and darting about he

would not be able to keep up his flight for many hours.

Nothing could distract her from her pursuit, not even

another, smaller wallaby that suddenly bounded up andoff in another direction, startled by the panic of his

cousin. Not even the potoroos scampering out of their

way. Still less the currawongs screeching and cawing and

waiting to share the kill. Nothing could distract her,

unless

Another sound, another smell, familiar and menacing,

not yet clear to her what it meant. Still, she kept after her

prey until, a roar, a crash, much louder than a crashing


33/46

branch, more like a great Huon pine falling to the forest

floor, and a pungent smell of gunpowder. Man!

She stopped, thrusting both forelegs stiff in front of

her, her haunches nearly folding into her shoulders from

the suddenness of the halt. She listened. The wallaby

could no longer be heard leaping and crashing through

the brush. The birds no longer screeched. She held verystill, jaw dropped and tongue out, ears straight up, chest

heaving silently, only her tail, moving stiffly but slowly,

betraying her nervousness. She knew, without knowing

why, that the shadows of the wood blended with the

stripes of her coat to make her nearly invisible, and so she

waited for some clear sign of danger or opportunity. Her

hunger was for the moment forgotten.

Billy had got him a wallaby. He had been all kinds of

nervous, thinking about tigers, and mountain lions, and

all of a sudden up popped this big wallaby, really

surprised him. A wallaby doesn't usually come out in the

open like that, especially not around a man, but here he

was, leaping right at Billy, and Billy with his gun at the

ready because of what was on his mind, and Bang!Well, it wasn't a tiger, but it was something. He'd got it

skinned by now, wasn't worth much but you could always

get something for a skin. Got a lot of bloodstains on him,

especially his pants, but he didn't mind that, except that it

made the cloth stiff. His mum would put her hands to her

mouth when she saw him. Poor mum. Maybe he'd just

stay out tonight, now that he'd got something to eat.

Mum'd worry, and he didn't want that, and Pa'd be angry,


34/46

but it'd serve 'im right, and wouldn't be the first time

anyway. Well, yes, it would be the first time all alone, out

in the woods. If he'd planned this, he would have brought

a handful of matches from the kitchen stove, and maybe a

blanket.

He was on the east side of the ridge, so the sun was

going down early, and it was getting cold. Mackenziewould know how to make a fire. Now if he could just

find some dry wood He liked wallaby, but he wasn't

about to eat it raw.

The cicadas were coming out now, and the currawongs

were making their evening noises. Billy was sitting on the

ground in a clearing, his back up against a log. The

clearing wasn't wide, but he could see a fair-sized patch

of sky. There weren't many stars, too cloudy, going to

rain, he thought. He was tired from the long hike. The

rifle had felt heavy after a while, and that dead wallaby

on his shoulder must have weighed near as much as he

did. He'd had to carry it for about an hour before he found

a clearing that he liked. It looked like he wasn't going to

have a fire tonight. He could stretch the skin on the

ground, fur side up of course, because the other side wasall bloody, and he could lie on that. He wished he had a

blanket. He sort of laughed at himself. Billy, look what

you done, where you've got yourself, all because you

wanted to catch a tiger, and you know there's no tigers

been around here since they got that one last fall, and that

was the only one anybody'd got for years and years.

Well, he answered himself, maybe there is a tiger or

even a lot of tigers. They're just hard to find, that's all.


35/46

She had been following the man with the rifle ever

since she saw him lift up the dead wallaby. He had taken

her wallaby and now he'd settled down not far from her

lair, where he had been for hours. She wanted that

wallaby. She had hunted it, tired it, and it was hers. But

she couldn't just stay here waiting forever. She had to eatsomething.

That shouldn't be such a problem now. It was her time,

early evening. The small animals came out now. She

backed out of the spot where she had been watching the

man with the gun and turned her head, slowly, testing the

air first in one direction, then another. Still, she was

reluctant to leave the man with the wallaby.

The rain made Billy want to move to cover. He

dragged the skin and his rifle over to the edge of the

clearing and found himself a more or less level spot

where only a few raindrops came through the overhead

leaves. He lay back and flung one arm over his face, and

ran thoughts of mountain lions and tigers through his

head. He liked feeling the rifle snug against him. Hethought of that tiger pelt that Uncle Con had, and tried to

imagine the tiger that had worn that pelt. And he tried to

imagine Con as the hunter Mackenzie. He wished he'd

got further in that book. Harry'd thought it was pretty

exciting at the end. Looked like that lion was going to

play some tricks on Mackenzie. Animals can be pretty

smart. Not the animals we got around here, maybe, but

those Rocky Mountain lions are terribly clever.


36/46

He heard some noises not far away. Pademelons,

probably. If he'd only brought some bloody matches!

Without a fire, animals will bother you all night.

Creation! They're making an awful bloody noise! He

flung his arm off his face and sat up. He didn't see any

animals, but sometimes it took a while, you had to look

real close, but in a kind of relaxed way. In the dark, youcould sometimes make out an animal only if you didn't

look right at him, but a little to the side. But this was a

gnawing and a tearing he heard. Funny noise, not like a

pademelon or a wallaby. Wallaby! His wallaby! He'd left

the skinned carcass back near the log where he'd been

resting.

Billy grabbed his gun and quickly rolled himself up to

a crouch and ran toward the wallaby carcass. But he'd

loosened his boots and one of them started to come off in

the mud, which slowed him down. Then he heard one

louder tear and a loud crunch and a scurry of feet, and he

could just make out a sole animal as it scampered off, its

tail waving almost straight out behind its bouncing rump.

There was just a bit of starlight coming through the

clouds it was still raining, but lightly. Billy could seehow the carcass had been dragged and torn apart. It no

longer looked like a wallaby at all, but like parts of seven

or eight smaller animals. One hip and hindleg were

completely gone. The marauder had gnawed or crunched

right through the bone. Devils could do that, two or three

devils could have done it in the few minutes it had taken

him to put the sound together with danger and rush up to

protect his prize. But he'd seen that it was just one


37/46

animal, much bigger than a devil. And the way it ran,

unevenly, with its hindquarters rising and pushing.

Billy's heart was racing now. He knew what it was, and

he could hardly believe it. But he had to believe it. His

thoughts flickered on Mackenzie and abandoned that

image at once. This was real, this was here, he didn't need

the Rockies or some other country's wildcats.He frantically pulled up and tightened his boots and

plunged into the brush, following the tiger, his rifle

grasped high to clear the ferns. He knew there wouldn't

be anything at all left of the wallaby when he got back

the devils would probably take care of it, and if they

didn't there were always the ravens and the little tiger

cats. But it didn't matter, and it didn't matter that he hadn't

eaten anything since breakfast. He was after a tiger.

She raced back through the woods, but only a little

ways, slowed by the weight in her jaws. She stopped,

dropped the bloody limb and attacked it again, quickly

tearing it apart and swallowing quickly, noisily. She

didn't hear the man until he was almost upon her. Startled

by the cracking of a branch and the shwoofing sound of aheavy foot sinking into the mud, she looked up and saw a

glint of starlight on metal. She crouched low and tore

again at the meat and swallowed a chunk whole before

twisting around to resume her path, racing through a

tunnel between the soft ground and the low branches.

The gun roared in her ears for the second time that day.

Billy was pretty sure his shot had gone wide, and he


38/46

rushed forward to get off another one when his toe ran

into a soft lump and he nearly fell on his face, catching

himself on some branches. He groped in the darkness and

found cold, bloody, hairless flesh. He whistled as he felt

around it, sensing how easily the tiger had cut right

through the bone. At least he'd interrupted its dinner. But

it was far off now, and moving much faster than he couldin the dark. He'd have to wait for daylight.

Billy had barely dozed, wrapped in his wallaby skin

against the cold and wet, waiting anxiously for the first

dawn. He couldn't stop shivering. He was thirsty and tore

off some leaves of a gum tree and started chewing as he

tried to stretch the kinks out of his back and opened his

pants to pee. The warm yellow stream steamed as it hit

the leaves and the cold mud. He looked around as he

shook himself and stuffed himself back into his pants and

buttoned up, all the time twisting his back and shoulders

to loosen up the cold, cramped muscles. He must have

slept more soundly than he'd thought. His clearing had

had visitors. There was now nothing whatever left of thewallaby except the skin that he'd had wrapped around

him. Even the skull had been eaten, except for the part of

the jaw with those big white grass-chomping teeth. Plenty

of tracks. He guessed there had been four or five devils at

work. Wouldn't have taken them long.

But he wasn't interested in the devils, and he sure didn't

care about the wallaby. He threw the skin down. Let 'em

eat that too, if they wanted. And they probably would. He


39/46

just wanted to find that tiger.

It took him several minutes, in that gray first light, to

find the spot where he'd fired on the tiger. The bloody

chunks of meat were gone, of course, but he could tell

from the broken branches that this was where he'd

stumbled. As the sky lightened a little more, he could see

where his bullet had gone through leaves and knocked offa small branch. He followed to where it must have gone

into the earth. No sign of blood, but there were broken

twigs very close by and what looked like fresh tracks,

like a devil's but bigger, with longer spaces between

them. He couldn't be sure, but he thought, or at least felt,

that he could discern the direction the tiger had gone.

Several times he doubted that he was still going in the

right direction, or that the tracks he was following were

still those of the tiger and not of a devil or of the smaller,

tree-climbing spotted carnivore they called a tiger cat.

But then he'd come upon a distinctive pawprint, and a

fresh break in a branch made by the passing of a larger

animal. The sun meanwhile was climbing he could tell

by the angle of the rays coming through the forest canopy

like individual skinny columns of light. He reckoned it tobe about six o'clock now, and that it had been before five

when he'd started. But he'd lost the trail again, and stood

very still, looking all around, puzzling what to do. Then

he heard something.

It could have been anything, any of the hundreds of

species of animals hunting or browsing on the forest floor

or on the lower limbs. A goanna, a potoroo, a bird even.

Then he heard either the same sound or another one, he


40/46

couldn't be sure, a scratching and brushing, and then a

little yip! of a small animal. He faced where he thought

the sound came from, reached the barrel of his rifle ahead

to clear the branches and stepped quietly but firmly

forward.

There was something, in deep shadow. A dark bulk. It

didn't move, and it took him a moment to tell what it was.Something under a ledge, making a shallow cave. He

readied his rifle and studied the outline of the cave,

following the rim with his eyes. Everything was either in

deep shade or dappled by the narrow columns of sunlight

shooting through the leaves. Yellows, grays, blue-grays,

green-grays, browns. He noticed something his eyes had

just passed over a second before, a branch or twig leaning

against the cave. No, leaning into the cave, or coming out

or it. He puzzled over this and then he saw it twitch, and

his own shoulders twitched in sudden, uncontrolled

reflex. A snake! No. Not a snake. A tail, the end of a

thick, straight tail. Dappled or perhaps striped.

As he stood there, in those few moments, the sun rose

slightly, enough so as to change the angles of the rays,

and now he could see more clearly what was before him.It was the tiger, but not at all as he expected to find it, on

all fours and ready to fight or run. It was lying on its side

with its long hind legs stretched out before it, almost like

a kangaroo, and it was staring at Billy, its eyes narrowed

in sharp, tense focus and its mouth slightly open. Billy

almost imagined it was smiling or laughing at him, like

his pa when he wanted Billy to know how stupid and

useless he thought he was. Billy was trembling now


41/46

again, not with fear but with the rage he'd felt almost

twenty-four hours earlier, when he'd started out on this

adventure. He was going to kill that tiger, but at the same

time he didn't know if he dared, the same way he hadn't

dared fight back when his pa had grabbed him and started

in with the switch. Defying what scorned you, it was like

blasphemy. He remembered the audacity of his Goddamn just the day before, and wondered if God had

heard and what he'd think of him. His arms were

trembling as he aimed the rifle, trembling from the

muscles pulling him to fire and the muscles pulling him

to lower the gun and surrender to the cruel, sarcastic

sneer.

Then he heard the yip! again. The tiger's mouth and

throat hadn't moved, as far as he could see. But he

noticed something else, a movement under the topmost

hindleg, a kind of tussle. And he saw a tiny paw and the

blunt end of a tiny snout, which then ducked back under

the fur. Then he understood. And he lowered the end of

his rifle slowly, not because he'd given up the idea of

shooting the tiger, but because now he knew the tiger was

not about to spring up and run away. He had seen enoughwallabies and kangaroos to know what was going on. She

was nursing, and from the movements under the fur of

her lower belly, it looked like there were more than one

young one in there.

He looked again at the face. It wasn't a sneer. It was a

look of fear and paralysis. But as the little ones tumbled

around beneath her bellyskin, he saw her nose rise ever

so slightly and her eyes half close, as though for the


42/46

moment she had become more aware of them than of

him. It changed things, somehow, to think of his tiger as

somebody's mum. But she'd taken his pa's chook. He

raised the rifle once again, this time not in anger but

regret. And this time there wasn't any fear of blasphemy

to hold him back.

The road back, 1990

They must have left much later than planned, because

it was already after 11 o'clock when Jonni and Andrew

stopped outside Deloraine. Andrew had been driving this

time. As he got out of the little compact rented car he

tried to smile, but it was a crooked smile, and perhaps

he was just sleepy, or fighting sleep, but his eyes looked

different, not dreamy and vague but intense. There was a

dark spot under his left eye, a smudge or a bruise. He

hadn't shaven. Jonni, in the passenger seat, did not move

at first, just stared forward as though not seeing anything,

probably not seeing the sign announcing tea and coffee,

the white-painted boards. Andrew stood just a little to the

right of the front end of the car, shivering in the cold

morning air, stretching and rolling his shoulders, hisneck. At last the passenger door opened and Jonni's

mudcaked pantsleg emerged.

Emohruo'? Jonni had the habit of reading signs

aloud, sometimes just for the pleasure of the sounds.

Read it backward, he answered curtly.

Oh, I get it. Like 'IXL,' the jam factory in Hobart.

Tasmanian word games. There, 'Rourke's Devonshire Tea

and Scones.' Sounds more promising.


43/46

Yeah.

Hey, snap out of it!"

Andrew stood silently, sullenly.

You've been like that all morning. What did you want

to do? Tell me! Stay up in the mountains until you found

your tiger?

No!It had been Andrew's insistence to travel into the wilds

of Cradle Mountain to find the beast, ever since he'd seen

one stuffed in the museum in Hobart. Sightings had been

reported, the museum placard said, even though scientists

were sure that the island's largest carnivorous marsupial

was extinct. At Cradle Mountain, he had at least seen the

jerky, silent, three-minute film of the last known one,

incessantly pacing his cage in London before dying

apparently of anxiety in 1928.

Now Andrew, his body rigid, his footsteps loud and

heavy, his face scowling , marched to the door and

pushed it harder than necessary. Two men at the only

occupied table in the place looked up, and when Andrew

said Good morning, they replied more politely than

might have been expected. Jonni smiled in their direction.When they were seated and had given their order to the

middle-aged woman who was probably the owner,

Andrew leaned across the table and said again, in a lower

voice but in the same tone, No! It's a myth. There is no

tiger, there are no Aborigines, they killed them all off and

now they want to pretend they didn't.

Yes, well, but you knew that. You knew that before

we left Hobart.


44/46

I knew it, I knew it, but I wanted to see it.

See what? The absence of a thylacine?"

"Look, I know! Will you leave me alone? It's over."

"What's over? Hey! God, Andrew, I hate it when you're

like this.

I hate this place. I wish we'd never come. But

anyway, it's over. We're going. You want to see the eastcoast, we'll see the east coast. But this, my part, it's over.

But you wanted to Oh, never mind. I don't even

know why I bother to argue. You wanted to come, you

said you loved it, you had to go up into the mountains.

We have only two days, I want to see the coastline, but

you have to come to the mountains, and I say, fine, let's

go. For you, for you I do this. I don't know why I bother.

It's over. That's all, it's over. They killed it.

It?' What do you mean? The tiger?

They went on like that, unpleasant, one angry, the

other exasperated, one repeating the same or similar

angry phrases, the other talking optimistically about

things they'd seen, the wild animals, the beautiful

mountains and forests,the flocks of sheep, the things they

had yet to see.Oh, right. The old prisons you mean? I can't wait.

Wonderful place Tasmania. Shackles and whips and

torture machines.

Oh, Andrew, stop it! Look at where you are! Now!

Not at ghosts. You're chasing the past, and it's, it's past!

That's right. Ghosts. This place is haunted!

You're haunted. The place is just a place, with people

living here, making a living, getting on as best they can.


45/46

Andrew trembled and his clenched fist crumbled the

scone and knocked into the sugar bowl. Jonni,

embarrassed, looked around, and suddenly saw a

photograph on the wall above them, one of a group of old

family portraits. Unlike the others, this one had been

tinted and was labeled in ink that has turned brown over

the years.What's it say there? Can you make it out?

What?" Andrew barked, and looked up. "The kid in

uniform? Another militarist.

Skinny young man. I'll bet he was tall. What does it

say?

No response from Andrew, now turned away from the

photo and glaring toward the window and their muddy

rented car beyond. His companion had to stand and lean

partway over the table to get a better look.

Sgt. William Rourke, 1919 Beulah, 1942 New

Guinea,' it says. Then, in bigger letters, Remember me.'

Still no response from Andrew.

There was another room in the frame tea house and

restaurant, with tables set for lunch or dinner, though no

one was in there now and the curtains were drawn. Atanother time, in another mood, Andrew might have gone

in to look around, examining everything with his

voracious, restless curiosity. But now it is Jonni who gets

up and walks toward the darkened room, but then stops,

stretching and yawning, and turns away toward another

door labeled, in that straightforward Australian fashion,

Toilet. And for that reason never sees the striped pelts

on the wall, three of them very small.


46/46

Author's Notes

Coverimage:

http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/events/exhibitions/2007/i

mpact/images/9.html

Tidbinbilla antenna photo:

http://www.astronomy.org.au/ngn/engine.php?SID=

1000014&AID=100055

Photo: Bagged Thylacine, 1869. This iconic image

featuring Mr. Weaver in a studio portrait is repeatedly

published, yet it is not attributed. It may have been takenby Victor Prout who sojourned briefly in Tasmania in the

late 1860s. http://www.lifeinthefastlane.ca/bizarre-and-

extinct-thylacine-creatures/offbeat-news

Our visit to Tasmania and to the museum of now-extinct

creatures in the museum, include the supposedly extinct

aboriginal people, made me want comprehend what

impels us, many of us, to try to destroy what we can'tcomprehend. I hope true Australians will forgive me this

attempt to reproduce rural speech of the 1930s.

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